EDITOR'S CHOICE -- SCOTT SUTTELL

Case Western Reserve's president best paid of Ohio private school chiefs

Blog Entry: December 10, 2012 1:36 PM | Author: SCOTT SUTTELL

The Chronicle of Higher Education does the heavy lifting of compiling compensation data for nearly 500 presidents of private, nonprofit colleges in the United States, and the numbers, as you'd expect, are eye-catching.

(Hat tip on this, by the way, to SportsBiz blogger Joel Hammond, who's always attuned to the importance of numbers.)

The Chronicle compiled the 2010 compensation data — the most recent year available — from the Internal Revenue Service's Form 990, which is filed by most major nonprofit entities. It obtained each institution's form from the college or from GuideStar, an organization that posts the documents online.

The best-paid president was Bob Kerry of The New School in New York City, with total compensation of $3.05 million. His base pay, though, was a relatively modest $602,539.

The data include 24 presidents of private colleges in Ohio. Tops in pay among those leaders was Barbara Snyder of Case Western Reserve University, with total compensation in 2010 of just over $730,000. That ranked 68th nationwide among the private school presidents.

No. 2 in Ohio, somewhat surprisingly, is Daniel Currin of the University of Dayton, at $669,405.

Marvin Krislov, president of Oberlin College, was No. 6 in Ohio, with total compensation of $462,058 in 2010. That put him at No. 192 nationwide.

Worried about 2013

Shares of Parma-based GrafTech International fell early today, the Associated Press reports, “on investor worries that the company's prospects for 2013 might be worse than previously expected and result in less profit for the year.”

The AP reports that Jefferies analyst Luke Folta cut his rating for GrafTech stock to "hold" from "buy" and reduced his price target by $6 to $9. He said checks on 2013 contract negotiations “show that demand for some of the company's key products has weakened, which will force GrafTech to lower prices,” according to the AP.

"Earnings in 2013 will decline year-over-year under these conditions with potential improvement in pricing later-cycle too far from sight to benefit GrafTech's valuation near term," Mr. Folta wrote in a note to investors.

As of 1 p.m., GrafTech's stock was trading at $8.97, down about 7% from Friday's close. The stock's 52-week high is $17.69, and the 52-week low is $8.45.

Conventional wisdom is wrong again

Are you up for some regression analysis? (You remember that from stats class, don't you?)

Fear not, you won't have to do any math if you read this blog post from Georgetown University's Dan Hopkins, who offers empirical perspectives on political issues for The Washington Post.

Here, Mr. Hopkins summarizes research “showing that the auto bailout didn't have nearly the effect on the election that commentators thought,” according to the post.

It gets a little academic, but not too much. Here's the key takeaway from his analysis of voting behavior in counties with Big Three plants compared with those that do not have such plants:

”If we account only for the state in which each county is located, we would estimate that local auto plants are associated with a 1.7 percentage point increase in Obama's vote share in the set of Midwestern states with more than one plant from an American automaker, or a 1.5 percentage point increase in all continental U.S. states outside of New England.

“Once we account for the county's population and its basic ethnic/racial demographics, however, these estimates decline to between 0.3 percentage points and 0.5 percentage points, and the associated uncertainty makes them indistinguishable from zero. The results are quite stable when we introduce additional controls for demographics, local industry and the volume of political advertising. Counties that are home to Big Three plants just don't behave very differently from similar counties that are not.”

Talking dirty

Forbes.com says Northeast Ohio is home to two of the 20 dirtiest cities in America.

The ranking is based largely on data from BestPlaces.net, which compiles air and water quality data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Factors in the air quality component include ozone and pollutants such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, lead and volatile organic chemicals. Water quality rankings use EPA data that measures watershed quality by looking at 15 indicators such as pollutants, sediments, and toxic releases.

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